Minutes of the Names Council conference call on July 12 1999,

beginning: 3:30 pm CET end. 5:15 pm CET

chair: Amadeu Abril i Abril

participants.

Nii Quaynor

Fay Howard

Bill Semich

Michael Schneider

Hirofumi Hotta

Jonathan Cohen

Caroline Chicone

Ted Shapiro

Jon Englund

Theresa Swinehart

Javier Sola

Ken Stubs

Richard Lindsay

Don Telage

David Johnson

Phil Sbarbaro

David Maher (observer)

Ben Edelman (Webcasting)

Anne-Kathrin Orth (minutes)

1. Last items added to the minutes:

1. as the NC-list is not an open list, the Emails should at least be archived and that archive be made publicly available.
2. funding of the DNSO

2. Report on the WG-A: Jonathan Cohen

The first part of the WG’s task is accomplished, all volunteers have been contacted, the reports are now posted on the DNSO-website. To create as much visibility and acceptance as possible, as much public comments as possible should be received. To achieve this, all members are asked to send out invitations to comment or even just agree to their constituencies, the General Assembly and any others they feel suitable. As silence differs in its meaning in different cultures, it was urged to view only explicit agreement as support for the reports and recommendations. According to Jonathan Cohen, the group has been progressing rather well considering the circumstances.

On the question of whether to ask the ICANN-Board for an extension of the deadline of the submission of the recommendations, Jonathan Cohen was of the opinion that only a very long extension would serve its purpose of achieving more intense participation and that hence he would suggest refraining from such a request.

There was some confusion on whether the reports should be sent directly to the ICANN-Board or via the Names Council. Factors might be the time pressure and considering that the report is already in its public commenting period, though no clear decision was reached.

It was reported that the mailing-lists concerning this Working group were temporarily shut down due to a misunderstanding but are again functionable.

3. Ted Shapiro’s Motion on a suggestion by the Property rights constituency on a recommendation for a dispute resolution system

„Forum shopping" by registrars for dispute resolution policies was reported as a major concern. New Policies are constantly being created, therefore a quick ICANN-Board decision would appear favourable to some. The model proposition sent out was amended and then supported by the Property Rights constituency.

It was asked whether the document more or less just supported the NSI system of putting domain-names on hold until a dispute resolution procedure has come to an end. Answer: No, this is more refined.

A written assurance by the registrar is needed that there are no current actions against the Domain-name who’s transfer is requested.

Main purpose of the recommendations is to prevent registrars from switching to the most suitable policy at the spur of the moment, not to endorse one specific policy.

It was asked whether large companies could use dispute resolution procedures to frustrate small players by imposing a heavy burden („paper monster") on them. A: It could actually work in favour of small companies, though the specific circumstances should be further explored informally.

The recommendation concisely refers to the law of applicable jurisdiction.

It was agreed to get the general written support of the General Assembly on this matter and then vote on the approval at the next teleconference in 14 days. It will also be posted on the website as is, with modifications added as they become necessary, to receive some public feedback.

Ted Shapiro, Ken Stubs and David Johnson will prepare the finalised report documenting the support the recommendations (will) have received.

4. WG-B: Jonathan Cohen

1. the procedures on the formation of working groups are not ready yet (he will send Bill Semich his comments and suggestions today), nevertheless everyone who had expressed interest was contacted to „start thinking".
2. a discussion began whether one of the co-chairs of a working group should (always) be chosen by the Names Council, the other from within the group, to avoid the problem of little enthusiasm by having a driving force at the top. The co-chair would still be responsible to reporting to the Names Council, providing a documentation of how the decisions were reached. Jonathan Cohen was unanimously elected to have the role of co-chair in WG-B, though Bill Semich was against him being chosen and beginning work before the draft on procedures of formation of WGs has been finished.

5. WG-C: Javier Sola

1. three drafting committees have been created in this provisional WG: (i) should there be new gTLDs and how many, which? (ii) what structure should the new registries have? Outlook on a call for tender by ICANN, (iii) working procedures for registrars to operate under; information has been published on the website, the discussions began last week.
2. The question of a possible conflict of interest for co-chairs of specific working groups arose. It was suggested to solve the problem by asking the co-chairs to write a brief statement on their background and the perspective they were taking on in their specific role as co-chair which would be included in the WGs report to inform the public. The reason for this was that these chairs are selected by a small group and a certain obligation to disclosure is felt.
3. The WG-C will attempt to have the „Santiago"-report ready by August 9^th, giving the ICANN-Board three weeks time to comment.
4. Javier Sola was unanimously chosen to co-chair this WG, though again, Bill Semich voiced concern that the NC be regarded as driving the process too agressively, suggesting to call the position „moderator" rather than co-chair.

6. Committee F: Bill Semich

1. apparently problems have occurred with Bill Semich posting to the NC-list, (NB. due to technical problem at mail.nic.nu) therefore he will be sending out his 18 draft proposals to the list personally. He suggested to include Teresa Swinehart in the Committee (no objections voiced). It was also suggested to integrate the committee in WG-D, though this was not discussed further as it was seen to be a mere formality of names.

7. WG-E: Nii Quaynor

1. there have been some volunteers to the group and the coordination of work has begun. The aim is to build up a membership of different constituencies and the General Assembly. As a focal point, it was unanimously decided to appoint Nii Quaynor co-chair of WG-E once a few days for discussion of the F-draft have passed. At the same time, Teresa Swinehart’s appointment to co-chair/focal point of WG-D will become effective (Javier Sola will be sending her the list of volunteers to date).

8. Chairs of the next two physical meetings

1. Tony Harris was volunteered chairing the NCs meeting in Santiago, though his agreement is yet to be received, Nii Quaynor chairing the General Assembly meeting. If Tony Harris should be unable to commit, a substitute will be chosen then.
2. Jonathan Cohen remains the chair for the NC-meeting in Los Angeles early November.

9. non-commercial constituency: David Maher

1. a draft charter has been posted along with an application form, which over 20 parties have filled in. A proposal for a more formal organisation of the constituency has also been received. No representatives have been elected yet as there appears to be resistance and a tendency to slow the process down a little, possibly because the affected individuals feel that ICANN is rushing through its important process.

10. AOB

1. Ken Stubs and Jonathan Cohen (though the latter is Canadian) have been asked to testify in New York on the 28^th.
2. The traffic on the list will be archived and publicly available as on the other lists.
3. a mechanism has to be found to prevent non-members of the Names Council from dialling into the conference calls and taking the lines from actual members.
4. some sort of budget is needed to pay for the rooms, the conference calls and the webcasting. Estimates will be collected until the next conference call, which will be hosted by NSI. It was agreed to rotate the hosting of conference calls to spread both the dial-in costs as well as the costs of hosting.

The next Names Council conference call will be held on Tuesday, July 27^th, at the same time (3:30pm CET), access information to be distributed well in advance. The topics (amongst others) will be: the WG-A recommendations, dispute resolution recommendations and the budget.